April 9 (UPI) — The Manhattan apartment that caught fire and killed one person and injured six firefighters over the weekend did not have a sprinkler system, investigators said.
The entire high-rise apartment became engulfed in flames Saturday at Trump Tower. Resident Todd Brassner, 67, died later at the hospital, officials said.
Fire Department of New York Commissioner Daniel Nigro said the “upper floors, the resident floors, are not sprinkled.”
“It was a very difficult fire, as you can imagine. The apartment is quite large,” Nigro told reporters, saying the unit was “virtually entirely on fire” when firefighters arrived.
The business and residential tower was built in 1983, years before sprinkler systems were part of the building code. Owners of older residential skyscrapers are required to install the sprinklers when major renovations occur.
Trump tweeted Saturday that the tower was a “well-built building” and thanked firefighters for extinguishing the blaze.
Trump’s family has an apartment on the top floor of the 58-story building, while the headquarters of the Trump Organization is located on the 26th floor.
The president and his family were not inside the building at the time of the blaze, Nigro said, adding that 200 firefighters and emergency medical service workers helped fight the blaze. Firefighters and secret service agents also checked on Trump’s apartment.
Some residents said they didn’t get a notification to evacuate the building.
Lalitha Masson, 76, told The New York Times the fire was “a very, very terrifying experience.”
“When I saw the television, I thought we were finished,” Masson said. “I started praying that this was our end. I called my oldest son and said goodbye to him because the way it looked everything was falling out of the window, and it reminded me of 9/11.”
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